♪ pushing me man >> it hurts my heart, you know what i'm saying? it hurts my heart. >> all's well, let's play "hardball." >> good evening. i'm chuck todd in for chris matthews here in washington. leading off tonight, no oil in sight. for the first time in 88 days, gulf coast residents woke up to what's got to be amazing sight, a picture of no oil spewing into the gulf of mexico. the cap is holding and everyone has their fingers crossed. we're going to go down to the gulf where they're cautiously optimistic they finally turned the corner. even if the oil has permanently

stopped flowing, one of the biggest victims of this spill politically has been president obama. the toll it's taken on his presidency and this question, how can he undo the damage. one of the great ironies of his presidency is the more victories he achieves, stimulus, health care, wall street reform, the more his poll numbers seem to go down. some of his loudest critics are on the left. also, we'll tell you which democratic senator left for dead has suddenly surged ahead of his tea party foe. people in washington are used to political earthquakes but they woke up to a real one this morning. it was a small one. those of us heavier sleepers missed it. it's a good reminder there are a lot more fault lines in this country than you might think. where they are, who's at risk. bottom line, earthquakes aren't just for californians any more. let's start with the latest on bp's efforts to seal off this oil leak for good.

anne thompson is nbc's chief environmental affairs correspondent and maybe no longer a permanent resident of venice, louisiana. they will be giving you voting rights by november, and you may get a tax bill. >> you know they're going to make me pay taxes. >> absolutely. okay, ann. where are we? we know they're in this testing phase to see if sealing this off is a permanent solution, i say permanent, the solution and until the relief well goes down. where do things stand? >> reporter: well, right now, national incident commander retired admiral thad allen just gave a briefing, chuck. and he essentially said what scientists and engineers are trying to figure out is what the pressure reading that they're getting inside the well means. the good news is the cap is holding. there's no oil going out into the gulf. the pressure reading is at 6,700 pounds per square inch, which is sort of right in the middle of

where they thought it would be after 24 hours. ideally, they would like it to be closer to 7,500 pounds per square inch. so why is it sticking at this 6,700 mark? there are two theories. one is because so much oil has already been spilled into the gulf, that there is actually less oil in the well than they thought. and that's one reason behind the lower pressure reading. the other theory is, and this is the scary theory, that there is a leak below the seafloor. now, the -- they have done seismic surveys. they have rovs, remotely operated vehicles using cameras and using sonar to see if there are any kinds of cracks in the seafloor. they're trying to detect where there might be a leak. they aren't finding any evidence of that. so what they have decided to do is they are going to go forward with the well integrity test for

another six hours and six hours from now reassess. but they just don't know quite what they have yet. and as i said, the good news is, at least no oil is going into the gulf. >> and ann, what they're testing though is whether they can keep this sealed off for good, correct? because even worse case scenario at this point, they now have a controlled way to keep some oil flowing up to a containment system, correct? so overall, there's still a lot of success here, right? >> reporter: right. there is. originally this cap was designed to help move the oil up to the surface. it wasn't designed to shut in the well. they decided to try to shut in the well and do this well integrity test because they want to know what's going on, you know, the well is more than two miles down underneath the seafloor. what's going on there. they don't know and there was some concern after that top kill procedure that maybe that damaged the well. it's still inconclusive. so but no matter what happens, if they can't shout in the well,

they are going to go back to containing the oil and they say they can do that fairly quickly. the q4,000 and the helix producer, two of the vessels are already out at the site. they've got the discover enterprise there and it's got a cap that could go on top of this new sealing cap that exists. they've got a lot of ways to go. when they do get the containment system fully up and running, it can capture up to 80,000 barrels a day which is 20,000 barrels more than what the government thinks is flowing out at the high end. >> ann, have we made a technological leap here, for instance, we're having this debate in the gulf about the moratorium on deep water oil drilling. have they by succeeding in some form of this found a way to reassure the government at the end of the day that you know what, now we know how to deal with this if there is a another catastrophe as big as this one, yes or no?

>> reporter: you know, i think that's a real leap. >> that's a leap, okay. >> caller: it is. huge leap. this has only worked for 24 hours and we don't know for how much longer it's going to work. beyond that, the biggest thing is they don't know how to clean up the oil once it spills. we have, this area has dealt with this for 88 days. and it is threatening to destroy a way of life. wetlands, marine life. the damage is extraordinary. and even if they can, even if this cap works to some degree, i can't imagine the people are going to walk away from this and say okay, problem solved. clearly it's not. the only way to clean up the oil is with a shovel and carefully scraping it off the sand and you really don't get all of it or using tiny little drum skimmers in marshes or flushing out marshes. there still is no good way to clean up the oil once it spills.

>> all right. anne thompson, i know you've got to do reporting for another news program. we will let you go. thanks very much for that update. turn it around before they yell at you. thanks very much. let's turn to buck lee now. executive director of the santa rosa authority overseeing pensacola beach. ann set this up pretty well, buck. so let's say they've turned off the spigot essentially and no more oil is coming. there's a lot of damage done. actual ecological damage. what you're dealing with is tourism damage, correct? >> that's right. first of all, welcome to beautiful pensacola beach. you see behind me white sands. gulf of mexico is clear. we need more tourism. that's the message across the united states. they think the whole state is covered in oil. look at our beach. we are not covered in oil. over three weeks ago, we were. we had some, we cleaned it up. our message to bp, they say we're going to make everything right and they're going to pay

all the hotel people the lost revenue between this year and last year. instead, why don't they say okay, we'll pay half the hotel rooms so instead of somebody paying $200 a night, they pay $99.95. our locals and tourists get to come here. people get to keep their jobs that work at the hotels. they go out and have dinner and they keep their jobs. if not they all go on unemployment and we have pay for taxes. >> you would like to develop a partnership almost say okay, bp, this is how you can pay us back. underwrite, help discount visitors. help discount hotels for visitors down here. you would like them to advertise. have you taken this plan to bp, has somebody taken this plan to the governor. >> we're working as a group on this. there's a let already sent to bp and unified command. it makes sense. they've got to have somebody that's fairly intelligent working in their accounting department that can look at this

and say that makes sense. we can save money, give everybody a good deal, locally and the tourists and they can get a room at half price. then we don't have people on the unemployment lines. instead, they get to work. they enjoy working out here. we have a great workforce on pensacola beach. they enjoy the locals and tourists coming here. >> you talked about that you haven't had any oil come on this beach in a couple weeks. are there any concerns, have you gotten any warnings there are plumes headed? i remember there was a big one they were worried about a couple of weeks ago. what is the latest you've been told by the unified command? >> the last time we got hit was 3 1/2 weeks ago. in two days, it was semi covered up by mother nature. tides came in and covered up a little of it. we don't see the that big red spot on the map that shows where all the oil is. it's moved, i don't know where it went. maybe the microbes ate it up. we do see that yellow cone of uncertainty that comes near here, but right now, we don't have any oil.

there may be sheen out there somewhere right now, i understand we had a meeting with bp this morning and the coast guard. they've got a lot of vessels out there near the spill cleaning it up where it comes out. right now, the gulf coast is beautiful in our area right here. >> what do you want, yesterday, i think it was monday, the first lady of the united states, michelle obama, basically did a tourism ad for panama city. would you like to see the government doing that? would you like to see the president doing those things? i asked him yesterday in an interview if he was going to vacation on the gulf coast, they hadn't decided that. is that the type of things you'd like to see the government do? >> no, no, they can -- god bless our president and everybody associated with them but when they come, they close down traffic for three hours. >> yes, they do. >> yeah, let them have a wonderful time in maine. have everybody else come on down here and not tie up traffic,

okay? that's what we want to see. >> i'm just saying what, you'd like to see is some sort of advertising effort either bp or the government or both, making an effort saying hey, everybody's open for business? >> well, the state of florida got about $20 million. but that's got to be used between pensacola beach and almost to clear water, tampa. that's not enough money. alabama got $20 million too and they were able to use some of that with the jimmy buffett concert they did. that's great. they've got orange beach and gulf shore. they're wonderful beaches also. we're all in this together in south alabama and northwest florida, trying to get the people to realize we're open for business. >> some of us are a little more biased to northwest florida. no offense to our friends over in gulf shores. buck lee, you're doing a great job selling it. you are selling it as well as anybody. maybe bp ought to underwrite you doing tv ads for them. thanks very much. >> i do not want to be associated with them but thank you any how. >> fair enough. you're not alone. coming up, the oil spill in the

gulf has dominated the news this summer. how has it affected president obama's agenda? his team believes it has and how has it undermined the confidence of voters ahead. that's ahead. you're watching "hardball" only on msnbc. affect wheat output in the u.s., the shipping industry in norway, and the rubber industry, in south america? at t. rowe price, we understand the connections of a complex global economy. it's just one reason 75% of our mutual funds beat their 10-year lipper average. t. rowe price. invest with confidence. request a prospectus or summary prospectus with investment objectives, risks, fees, expenses, and other information to read and consider carefully before investing. woohoo! it's not the lighting, girlfriend. mnh-mnh. oh gosh! woo! it's this drab one-tone hair color, ick. yeah. let's szush it up. [ gigi ] try nice 'n easy with colorblend technology. in one simple step, get a blend of tones and highlights. so even in this lovely light, nice 'n easy comes to life with dimension.

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president obama talked about the cap on the oil spill. he said they sounded optimistic. listen. >> here is the good news everybody needs to understand. if it turns out we can't maintain the cap and completely shut off the flow of oil, the new cap allows us to essentially attach many more containment

mechanisms so that we are able to take more oil up to the surface, put it on ships, it won't be spilling into the gulf. >> all right. day 88. how much has this crisis hurt the president's agenda and his own credibility? david gregory, the moderator of "meet the press." i want to start with something else the president said because he brought up an issue that a lot of his aides have brought up. take a listen to what he said. >> well, i think it's important that we don't get ahead of ourselves here. you know, one of the problems with having this camera down there is that when the oil stops gushing, everybody feels like we're done. and we're not. >> one of the problems with having this camera down there. one of the problems. that camera has probably done more damage to president obama whether he liked it or not politically than anything else that they've had over the last six months.

>> you know, because ultimately if a president and washington overall are judged by what whether you're solving the problem if you have to look at this thing every day and it's a live picture of the problem unfolding, it's not even like a hurricane. >> it was meant to embarrass bp. >> that's exactly right. ed markey was the one who pushed for that, democrat from massachusetts and thought it was important to really hold bp accountable. the problem is, it created all these issues to what extent the administration was able to really control bp. all this point about how this plays now, you still have a huge problem. the president spoke with such great specific detail. the public is not focused on that. when does the oil stop flowing and then we can concentrate on the environmental damage and then you can factor in how much money it's going to cost to rebuild that region that still hasn't been rebuilt after katrina. the problems don't get any better, unfortunately. >> a lot of aides will tell you that before april 20th is when the deep water horizon exploded. i think it was march 11th or

12th, they signed health care. they had the pretty good jobs report the end of the month jobs report coming in from february to march and really thought they were turning a corner. this oil thing stopped everything dead, didn't it? >> it did. it focused on the limits of what government can do. there were probably some deficiencies there in how the president communicated about it, some things that were done. overall this was a really hard thing. you had republicans like haley barbour not criticizing the president saying he had done a pretty good job. political posturing going on on all sides. when the economy is in the shape it's in, that's the bottom line. and so everything else is sort of seen through that prism. so you deal with an intractable problem like this that only points up the limits of what government can do, it also refocuses people's frustrations on other areas. >> but it just did another thing which was, you hate to call it a distraction, but they were trying to make, trying to make the turn on the economy. they've been trying to make the turn on some other things and

they couldn't even, they would talk about it, but we were covering it. >> but the president wants to have a singular focus on jobs. you can't do that when he's surging up forces in afghanistan, when he's dealing with health care reform, financial regulation. there's too many other things going on. so having a singular focus is not something he's been able to do. you get something like this that he can't swoop in and affect in a way that makes him necessarily look good. there's no looking good here because the problem is too big and unwieldy and it's going to take too much time. it's going to be a major problem even when the press and the public is not keenly focused on it. >> is there something about this incident that you think they learned from in a positive and they're sort of taking it -- it does seem like they learned something on the mcchrystal incident. have you sensed anything that they sort of at least get how they need to handle one of these? >> i think in a lot of these incidents it becomes some communications lessons but frankly, that's kind of small in the scheme of things.

this is a much bigger issue about where we get our energy from, the idea of offshore drilling. our other sources of energy. look, the ability to seize a moment like this and do something big with it, if they're going to do an energy bill that is just not a compromise bill, you wonder where is the political capital, where is the political momentum, is it to be found anywhere if you can't take a crisis like this and turn it into something really important for the country. that's the difficulty i think the administration finds itself in with the backdrop of the economy doing something big in other areas whether it's health care, even financial regulation. if there's no jobs out there, it becomes difficult to lift all the votes. >> i want to turn to politics, robert gibbs ob "meet the press" on sunday seemed to start a firestorm. it was almost as if he woke up a bunch of house democrats that didn't know they were in trouble how the reaction went on. but it did seem to sort of

clarify things and gave republicans momentum at a time that was very important to them financially. they're coming on this week. we have not seen pete sessions. this is his national tv debut. thank you david gregory. catch it, it's a political junkies dream. up next, not getting much from the democratic party. green is getting his wish. he got his own action figure, sort of. we'll explain next in the side show.

all right, back to "hardball" and it's time for the sideshow. first, dreams can come true, at least if you're alvin greene. you remember him, he's south carolina's come out of nowhere democratic nominee for the

senate. he said this month one way the state's economy could be boosted would be selling alvin greene action figures. well, a minor league baseball team took the idea to heart. charleston river dogs took their mr. liberty figure and pasted over it a head shot of the would be senator. greene tweeted a special thanks to the team because they plan to hand out the figurines at a game this saturday. greene just announced his fund-raising total since winning the primary. his haul, about $1,000. for a little bit of perspective, jim demint has $3.5 million on hand. not sure how well that's going to go, but you never know with minor league baseball. moving over to georgia, there's a seven-way race for the republican governor's nomination. the current front-runner john oxendine. who he is? apparently at least a comedy writer he's coming across as a birther. check it out.

>> you know, there's a similarity between and barack obama. neither of wish have a birth certificate. the difference is, god does not think he's barack obama. >> it's one thing to tell the joke and we've heard some folks like joe biden and others make some funny birth certificate jokes. it's another when you're running for governor these days, not sure if you want to be caught doing that. we'll see. stay tuned for primary results this tuesday. definitely going to be a run off. now time for the "hardball" big number. mayor mike bloomberg's campaign just filed its final spending report from 2009. it turns out the new york billionaire spent $109 million on that will -- actually very how much total over three mayoral elections has mike bloomberg now spent? ready for this? $268 million. even in washington.

even in congress, they would say that three quarters of a billion dollars or one quart of a billion dollars was a lot of money. we shall see. it's a spare no expense big number tonight. coming up next, "your business."

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